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THE 



YOUNG MEN 



OF AMERICA. 



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v 

By SAMUEL BATCHBLDEE, Je. 



(beprinted from the young men 1 s magazine) 



NEW YORK: 
SHELDON & COMPANY. 

BOSTON: GOULD k LINCOLN. 
1800. 

L 



1\ 



/ 



19759 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1859, by 

richard o. Mccormick, 

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern 

District of New York. 




E. CRAIGHEAD, 

Printer, Stereotyper, and Electrotyper, 

Caiton 33uilotng, 

81, 83, and 85 Centre Stred* 



PREMIUM OFFERED. 



New York, October 1, 1857. 

The Editor of The Young Men's Magazine, with a desire to incite 
the Young Men of America to a careful and thorough consideration 
of their responsible position before the world, and also to render the 
Magazine still more worthy their generous patronage, hereby offers a pre- 
mium of One Hundred Dollars for the best Essay written for its pages, 
by a Young Man (resident in America, and under thirty years of age) 
upon 

THE YOUNG MEN OF AMERICA, 

Considered in their several responsible relations, as follows, viz. : 

1st. Social, 

2d. Moral and Religious, 

3d. Business and Professional, 

4th. Literary and Scientific. . 

The entire Essay to cover not more than thirty-five nor less than twenty- 
five pages of the Magazine. 

The following well-known gentlemen have kindly consented to act as a 
Committee to examine the Essays submitted, and award the Premium 
according to their best judgment, viz. : 

Professor Howard Crosby, New York, 
Professor Charles Murray Nairne, New York, 
George H. Stuart, Esq., Philadelphia 

Competitors will direct their Manuscripts, by or before January 1, 1858, 
(each accompanied by a sealed note giving the full address of the writer, 
which note will not be opened unless the Essay receive the prize,) to 

"Prize Essay Committee, 

Office of The Young Men's Magazine, 

New York." 



PKEMIUM AWARDED. 



New York, January, 23, 1858. 

Richard C. McCormick, Esq., Editor, etc. 

Sir : — The undersigned, appointed a committee to examine the essays 
on "The Young Men of America," submitted to The Young Men's 
Magazine, and to award the premium to the most deserving, according 
to their best judgment, have performed the duty assigned them and render 
the following report : 

Ten manuscripts were received, all (but one,) of which evinced care- 
ful thought and a just appreciation of the subject, together with high lite- 
rary merit ; of these your committee selected the manuscript marked No. 
8, (motto " Festina lente ") as especially combining clearness of expression 
and systematic division, with wholesome and vigorous sentiment, and as 
most completely answering the requirements of your prospectus. After 
coming to this decision, your committee on opening the accompanying 
letter, discovered the manuscript to be the production of Samuel Batch- 
elder, Jr., of Cambridge, Mass., to whom they therefore unanimously 
award the prize of One Hundred Dollars, by you offered. 

With much respect, 

Howard Crosby, 
Charles Murray Nairne, 
George H. Stuart. 



THE 



YOUNG MEN OF AMERICA. 



The Republic, of which, we are citizens, is instinct 
with the principle of youth ; much of its soil has never 
felt the plough ; its inhabitants are a mixed and hetero- 
geneous multitude, not yet welded into a distinctive na- 
tionality ; its institutions are, for the most part, the fresh 
growths of a hopeful present ; its manners and habits of 
thought have scarcely yet received the impress of conven- 
tionality ; time has hardly set his seal upon any work of 
man in the land, and throughout its length and breadth 
the nation is literally and emphatically rejoicing in " the 
newness of life." 

Not the least interesting among the results of this 
condition of things is the peculiar sympathy developed 
between the State and her younger children. Nowhere 
is the young man called, nay, commanded to loftier 
duties and graver responsibilities, nowhere is he earlier 



6 THE YOUNG MEN OF AMEEICA. 

summoned to the toils, the trials and rewards of maturer 
life ; his country's youth infuses his own with an added 
energy and vigor, awakens a generous enthusiasm, and 
quickens his patriotism with a warm and sympathetic 
thrill. She entreats his companionship and guidance in 
treading the unexplored pathways of that future, the 
common inheritance of both, along whose enchanting 
vista the eyes of each are longingly gazing, — too long- 
ingly and earnestly perhaps to credit the warnings of 
impending danger, of conditions to be fulfilled, and risks 
to be encountered, or to regard the monitions of an elder 
experience teaching that no possible grandeur of nations 
or of individuals is worth the employment of an unworthy 
means, or the sacrifice of a single honest impulse. 

It is in view of the close connection which circum- 
stances have thus established between the young men of 
America and the welfare and destiny of their country, 
that the study of the "several responsible relations" in 
which they are placed, becomes of the highest interest 
and importance. Not because we may hope thereby to 
furnish a panacea for existing evils, still less to establish 
inflexible dogmas, or to erect a rigid system of rules and 
principles applicable to every variety of case and condi- 
tion, but simply because such an investigation in some 
shape has become a duty, almost a necessity, and because 
in the contact and attrition of many minds, some scintil- 



THE YOUNG MEN OF AMERICA. 7 

lations of truth can scarcely fail to be elicited. Neither 
is it amiss that the subject should be regarded from 
various points of view, that young men should them- 
selves give utterance to the fruits of their experience and 
reflection, thus contributing their quota to the common 
stock, which, if it serve merely to stimulate to closer and 
more careful research, and call forth the well-weighed 
and valuable opinions of their seniors, will not have been 
altogether wasted. 

These relations present themselves to our considera- 
tion under four heads, viz. : — those which are 

I. Social, 

II. Moral and Religious, 

III. Business and Professional. 
IY. Literary and Scientific. 

According to this classification, we are to direct our 
attention — 

I. To the young man of America as a member of 
Society. The word society, as applied to the association 
of individuals for the attainment and preservation of 
certain rights, benefits and privileges, has, in America, a 
meaning entirely its own. Its phenomena are bold and 
striking, constantly passing before our eyes with the 
blaze and rapidity of meteors, and equally mysterious in 
their origin and composition. Its structure, laws, disor- 
ders, needs and remedies, are complicated and difficult 



8 THE YOUNG MEN OF AMERICA. 

of discernment, even to the catholic and comprehensive 
mind, prepared to enter upon the investigation in an 
impartial and painstaking spirit, and penetrating deeply 
down beneath the surface and show of its outer life to 
analyze the causes and principles in obedience to which 
it has developed, following up that development step by 
step to its latest phase. Such research, however, belongs 
to a distinct department of thought, and is alike beyond 
the limits, and foreign to the scope of the present paper : 
it must suffice to fix our attention briefly upon a few 
salient points more immediately connected with the topic 
under consideration. 

And, first, we remark upon the results of that seeming 
contradiction between the theory and the fact respecting 
the status of citizens, more or less obvious in nearly all 
governments, and particularly so in republics, results 
which tell with peculiar force upon the younger mem- 
bers of the body politic. 

The native equality of all men, which forms the funda- 
mental doctrine of republican governments, society recog- 
nizes only in a political sense. To say this is only to 
say that theory is easier than practice, to complain of it 
is to quarrel with causes inherent in our nature. We 
might, indeed, go farther, and ask whether any other 
than a theoretical equality has ever existed among men, 
but our present concern is merely to trace the effects of 



THE YOUNG MEN OF AMERICA. 9 

these opposite ideas of equality upon the young man in 
our country. Using the state as her mouth-piece she 
tells him, and tells him truly, "you were born upon 
American soil, (or have become entitled to American 
citizenship,) you are therefore the entire and perfect 
equal of each and every man around you ; the adminis- 
tration of affairs is in your hands, and I recognize no 
duties or privileges, hereditary or otherwise, in any man 
or body of men different from your own ; in effect, we 
are one, — ' you are the State.' " Passing, then, from 
this lofty tone of address to that of more ordinary and 
familiar discourse, she assures him, with equal sincerity, 
if less directness and vehemence, that those brilliant 
natural gifts shall be duly rewarded, that his illustrious 
family name shall be a patent to her favor, and that she 
will by no means disregard that solid and shining equi- 
valent which he offers as the purchase of some of her 
dearest honors. 

Such is, substantially, the contradictory greeting with 
which society meets the young American at his entrance 
upon active life. He feels, however, that it involves no 
practical inconsistency, implies no real favoritism, and 
embodies no illiberal, exclusive spirit. He perceives 
that if it magnify the rewards of success, it throws her 
avenues open to all, and that it is, in fact, but an acknow- 
ledgment of that carefully adjusted equilibrium between 



10 THE YOUNG MEN OF AMERICA. 

the democratic and aristocratic forces in the social body, 
by which, each is rendered essential to the other, and the 
preponderence of either prevented. From this condition 
of things results an ambition of a peculiar stamp, an 
energy which has become proverbial, both stimulated to 
an eager pursuit of social distinction, -which, because a 
right* has become a necessity, the young man says within 
himself, " society sees in me a simple unit, in whom she 
recognizes nothing in esse, but everything in posse ; it is 
enjoined upon me to neglect no right; to prove myself 
worthy of this is a right none the less positive and tan- 
gible than any of the civil privileges to which I am en- 
titled, — not to claim it, not actually to enjoy it in some 
shape or other, is, in fact, a voluntary outlawry from the 
pale of civilization, a kind of social suicide." It follows 
that, where all are aspirants, and the conditions of suc- 
cess within the 'reach of all, the contest will not only be 
earnest and something more, but that the coveted rewards 
will at once be reached by a large number, and lose 
somewhat of their relative value. Upon two only of 
the more usually preferred claims to these rewards do 
we now propose to remark ; some of them may form 
the subject of subsequent discussion. 

In democracies, political science receives an early and 
extended, if not a sound and healthy development. 
Every citizen is supposed to unite with the possession 



THE YOUNG MEN OF AMERICA. 11 

of his privileges and immunities the knowledge and 
integrity requisite for their enjoyment and preservation, 
a presumption which is probably as near the truth in 
this country as elsewhere. But though every sailor who 
treads her deck be a commodore, the ship of state moves 
onward under the real command of but few among her 
nominal officers ; because it is every man's business to 
compute her courses and reckonings, a tacit understand- 
ing has delegated the immediate responsibility of her 
navigation to those willing to assume it. Hence our 
race of politicians, ever ready to ease the people's shoul- 
ders from the burden of governing, and to parcel out 
among themselves such honors and emoluments as the 
administration of affairs, or other public station may 
afford. Along this road, and with these companions, 
society points the way to political eminence, — to the 
young American, usually a most alluring prospect. It 
is, as it were, his birth-right, his specialty, the career 
which education and circumstances seem to have 
marked out for him. Placed in a community keen to 
discover, and prompt to reward practical and available 
talent, thoroughly informed, through the medium of an 
untrammelled and copious press, on matters of public 
interest, and early accustomed to participate in discus- 
sions, and to take sides in the divisions which they occa- 
sion, he sometimes finds himself fairly embarked upon 



12 THE YOUNG MEN OF AMERICA. 

the sea of politics, almost without knowing why or 
how. 

Once there, however, and in the possession of office, 
how noble, how enviable is his position ; his duties may 
be many, his responsibilities onerous, but he is the accre- 
dited representative of the only absolutism on earth, the 
vicegerent of that power which knows no human supe- 
rior. Nor is he a mere delegate of that power, but 
forms in his own private and personal capacity a com- 
ponent part thereof, thus sustaining, like his fellow citi- 
zens, the double relation of governor and governed. 
Abstractedly viewed, the picture is, indeed, one of such 
beauty and grandeur, that it is painful to pass from sha- 
dow to substance, from fiction to reality, to acknowledge, 
with a mortification the full bitterness of which can only 
be known to those reared among our institutions, that 
this much coveted distinction is, of all the honors which 
society can confer, the most cheapened, the most ephe- 
meral, the most unsatisfying, the most abused. To point 
to the lessons of history, and the uniform experience of 
older states, to hint at the inseparable evils which swarm 
around the very name of " Commonwealth," is for us 
neither excuse nor palliation ; — though we may not recon- 
struct human nature, it is certainly possible to quicken 
those half-dormant perceptions, to nourish and develop 
those dwarfed and sluggish powers in the constituency, 



THE YOUNG MEN OF AMERICA. 13 

which once in full and healthy activity should inaugurate 
a new order of things in the public service, creating at 
once a demand for and supply of those commoner virtues 
of private life — honesty and disinterested zeal — which 
should teach the selfish, the ignorant and the unscrupu- 
lous, the merchantable, if not the intrinsic value of patri- 
otic endeavor, and subordinate the brief and barren 
triumphs of parties and of individuals to the general 
good of the whole people. Such considerations may be 
visionary, unpractical, Utopian, but they are forced upon 
us by evils terribly real, the precursors of civil calami- 
ties none can say how imminent and dire. If such are 
the legitimate and inevitable results of free institutions, 
we may indeed relapse into the apathy of despair, or 
seek simply to delay the ruin which we cannot avert, 
but we all, and especially the young men of the country, 
guardians of the unfolded destinies of the Republic, owe 
it to ourselves, to the great experiment in which we are 
engaged, to the eyes and hearts all the world over, 
that watch us as the gamester watches the last cast of 
the die, not to accept unproven assertion for proven fact, 
but to fulfil the whole duty of the citizen promptly and 
well, introducing into the conduct of public and political 
affairs the same ethical code which regulates the ordinary 
intercourse between man and man, and erecting a higher 
standard of honor both in the constituent and the repre- 



14 THE YOUNG MEN OF AMERICA. 

sentative body. Good men and true we have, indeed, in 
the service of the state, as in that of the mart, the 
church, the forum and the field ; men of incorruptible 
virtue, of enlightened statesmanship, of lofty, single- 
hearted patriotism ; but we too often place snares and 
pitfalls in their way, we suffer the clamorous and plausi- 
ble demagogue to thrust them aside, or send them un- 
supported to the encounter of fearful odds, yielding at 
last, it may be, the meed of their reluctant but well- 
earned honors to — their memories. 

Let the young men of America ask themselves the 
nature and extent of their responsibility for such a con- 
dition of things as this. Have they, in the fresh exube- 
rance of youthful vigor, flushed with the possession of 
full-grown political privileges, and giddy with the con- 
templation of the magnificent possibilities of the future, 
hurried onwards themselves, and urged others forward 
with inconsiderate haste ? Have they given the more 
heed to the exercise of power, or to the accountability 
which its possession imposes ? Have they hearkened to 
the seducing speech which addresses itself to their pas- 
sions, their prejudices, their youth, or to the friendlier 
counsels of honest and disinterested advisers ? Are they 
the originators of that free-masonry of party, that reck- 
less, desperado school of political tactics which justifies 
the means in the end, and which cannot abide the inter- 



THE YOUNG MEN OF AMERICA. 15 

ference of reason, moderation, or common justice ? These 
are grave questions ; they exhibit, perhaps, the darker 
aspects of a picture which wears many hues of a brighter 
cast, and glows with future promise, but it were well 
could an exculpatory answer be returned to each and 
every inquiry. Our younger citizens must take heed 
what character and direction they impart to the current 
which is sweeping us onward with such rapidity, remem- 
bering that with them it in a great measure rests so to 
guide and regulate its course as to secure the welfare and 
gratitude of their children, restoring, at the same time, 
official station to its true place in the public regard, by 
bringing forward a class of candidates worthy of its 
honors. 

The relative amount of social distinction which the 
mere possession of wealth will secure in any given com- 
munity, is ordinarily in the inverse ratio to the degree 
of culture therein, and to the attention bestowed upon 
pursuits of a less material kind. Hence, wherever the 
battles of civilization are still waging, and man is yet 
engaged in making good his domain over the opposing 
forces of nature, paying down, piece after piece, the 
price of that golden leisure beneath whose fructifying 
influence the more liberal and humanizing arts shall 
blossom and mature, we find the distinctions between 
money as a means and as an end less clearly appre- 



16 THE YOUNG MEN OF AMERICA. 

hended, and society bestowing a fuller measure of hom- 
age upon the power which wealth confers, than upon 
the use to which that power is applied. Especially is 
this true, where hereditary rank is unknown, and the 
aristocracy of birth is not prominently brought either 
into combination or competition with the less subtile and 
inaccessible aristocracy of riches. With us, the prizes 
of the political arena are as nothing in comparison with 
those which the necessities and cupidity of man, and the 
bounty of nature have rendered possible to the feverish 
seeker after gain ; which have lined the pathways of 
fortune with such vast multitudes as both to stimulate 
the desire and lessen the chances of individual success. 
Under such circumstances, the homelier virtues of pru- 
dence, economy and foresight languish and decay ; the 
more ordinary and unpretending avocations are deserted 
for those whose returns, if less certain, are greater and 
more rapid, and trade gathers into its service an undue 
proportion of the young and vigorous materiel of the 
nation. 

The possession of wealth being thus the corner-stone 
upon which so much of the fabric of our social order is 
made to rest, the criterion of success suffers a misapplica- 
tion and perversion from its legitimate use ; the young 
are early embued with the prevailing spirit, and learn to 
assert the doctrine of equality by an ostentatious parade 



THE YOUNG MEN OF AMERICA. 17 

of the external badges of prosperity, even though, its 
substantial constituents be wanting, while the native in- 
dependence of the national character is overlaid with a 
kind of false shame, unwilling gracefully to accept the 
necessary inequalities and gradations of social condition, 
and seeming almost to feel a sacrifice of personal right in 
the outward acknowledgment of superiority, even in 
that respect which, least of all others, deserves to be con- 
sidered a test of real desert. Comparatively few have 
the moral courage voluntarily to take up with an honest, 
unambitious competency, although from the more even 
distribution of property it is necessarily the lot of by far 
the larger number. In all this there is, it may be, matter 
for congratulation as well as for regret, for we trace 
therein the natural working of some causes which we 
would not, if we could, annul, and of institutions in 
which we feel an honest and honorable pride. It were 
well, however, to remember that there are disorders 
which spring from a superabundance of vital energy, as 
well as others which fasten themselves upon a decrepit 
and decaying organization, and that those to whom the 
administration of the appropriate remedies is entrusted 
may not safely neglect so important a duty. 

But society, if at times a generous patron, is always an 
exacting taskmaster, and though she shows herself with 
us prompt to discover and reward intellectual and moral 



18 THE YOUNG MEN OF AMEEICA. 

worth, as well as success of the vulgar and material sort, 
she takes care that all, whether careless or ambitious of 
her honors, shall understand the reciprocity of obligation 
she imposes. Haying, by noble educational systems, 
deputed to the state the office of imparting to the embryo 
citizen the mental discipline requisite for the proper use 
and enjoyment of his privileges, and of discharging the 
varied and responsible functions of his condition, she 
looks for a fitting return for her fostering and impartial 
care, and feels that some practical acknowledgment is 
due from the man to whom she has, in youth, faithfully 
extended the means of improvement, and the protection 
of equal laws ; that her early encouragement and assist- 
ance should elicit something better than unprofitable gra- 
titude. There is great danger that this sense of indivi- 
dual responsibility and obligation for benefits common to 
all, should be lost sight of, simply because of their wide 
and equal distribution ; and in this very forgetfulness, 
or rather insensibility, lies the cause of many social dis- 
orders. A certain kind of enthusiasm, indeed, a senti- 
mental admiration of, and desire for the perpetuation of 
those institutions which have made us what we are, and 
of whose kindly influences we are all sensible, is suffi- 
ciently common, but there is much reason to believe it, 
in many cases, a " zeal not according to knowledge." If 
we are to continue in possession of these blessings, conti- 



THE YOUNG MEN OF AMEEICA. 19 

nually rendering ourselves more worthy of them, and 
them of us, we must recollect that they are something 
more than mere matters for mutual felicitation or boast- 
ful talk, or the convenient watch-words of party warfare ; 
that they are topics for careful study, for earnest thought, 
not of that " pale cast" in which our " enterprises of 
great pith and moment" shall "lose the name of action," 
but of that sober sort which their greatness deserves, and 
which is equally indispensable to their full comprehen- 
sion, and their use, increase and preservation ; and that 
upon each of us, especially at his entrance upon the rich 
inheritance prepared for him, devolves a share, — infini- 
tesimal it may be, but still a share, — of this duty, not 
capable of being delegated to any man, or any association 
of men, but strictly personal and individual. It seems, 
at first sight, a strange anomaly that where the means of 
intellectual culture are so widely diffused, and know- 
ledge is within the reach of the humblest, that the land 
should be overrun with shams, and pretenders and pre- 
tences abound, but the reason probably consists in the 
necessity which wilful ignorance experiences of clothing 
itself in the semblance of wisdom, or of adopting some 
other mode of concealment. Error has learned to as- 
sume her most dangerous and cunning disguises, and 
instead of urging her way by physical force, or by direct 
appeals to human prejudice and passion, she now insi- 



20 THE YOUNG MEN OF AMERICA. 

nuates her fatal mischiefs by flattering the intolerable 
conceit of those, who, in an age of enlightenment, are too 
indolent to stretch forth the hand for the fruit of the 
tree of knowledge, and too cowardly to avow their men- 
tal emptiness before men. The opportunity of profi- 
ciency, not only in the fundamental departments of ordi- 
nary education, but in those which are higher and more 
abstract, even in the wonderful and mysterious processes 
whereby the laws of matter and of mind are laid open to 
human comprehension, is so patent and familiar a privi- 
lege, that the charlatan plies his trade with thef double 
advantage of having both the presumption of truth and 
character on his side, and the vain and timid, as well as 
the ignorant, for his victims. 

The will and the power to unmask his pleasing wiles 
are too seldom found united in the person of the better 
informed, for to contend with the united forces of knavery 
and folly demands not only a wise head, but a stout 
heart, a cool temper, great knowledge of human nature, 
and philanthropic instincts of no common range and 
intensity ; moreover, it is the business of no one in parti- 
cular to supply the omissions, or correct the mistakes of 
early nurture ; the school is looked upon as the only 
agency, its teacher the only potentate accountable for 
the quantity and quality of the mental equipment with 
which the young man sets forth upon his journey. 



THE YOUNG MEN OF AMERICA. 21 

What society in reality demands of all, especially her 
younger members, is a close and thorough correspond- 
ence between means and results, between powers and 
their employment, gifts and their use. There is a ten- 
dency among us to deal with the subject of mental and 
moral education in the aggregate, as a thing merely of 
public and political concern, a good to be reached by 
combined and organized effort, to the disregard of pri- 
vate and special training, and of those many humble 
instrumentalities w r hich immediately surround us ; — the 
sweet and wholesome influences of home, and the thou- 
sand nameless forces and operations of domestic life are 
under-estimated, and reckoned as simply subsidiary to 
the vast and ingeniously-constructed mechanism with 
whose aid we think to develop the many-sided product 
man, and turn out the completed article of any required 
pattern on an illimitable scale. Hence a disturbance in 
the nice adjustment of the several constituent parts of 
our humanity, a dwarfing of a certain set of powers and 
faculties to make room for the growth of the rest ; — the 
benumbed requirements and capabilities grope blindly 
for the light, and perhaps reach at last a partial and 
imperfect development, but the character is lacking in 
certain ingredients which, earlier provided, would have 
overruled or modified the appetite for coarse or crimi- 
nal pleasures, the apathetic languor, the misguided, un- 



22 THE YOUNG MEN OF AMERICA. 

hallowed ambition for which the largest and most bril- 
liant intellectual attainments are no compensation — nay, 
which are never so potent for evil as when linked with 
an extended and thorough culture. 

To combat such mischiefs as these, growing out of the 
peculiar circumstances and constitution of American so- 
ciety, stamping upon many of its phases an aspect sad 
and perplexing, alike to the philosophical, and to the 
casual and ordinary observer, must commend itself as a 
duty of immediate and pressing urgency. It is obvious, 
however, that in studying the nature of this duty, its 
attendant difficulties, and the best modes of accomplish- 
ing the desired end, we penetrate at once below the mere 
social surface, and beyond all positive human institu- 
tions, to the great, all-encompassing principles of the 
divine and spiritual economy, and touch upon those 
deeper questions of ethical science into which nearly all 
such topics are resolvable, and under the form of which 
their only satisfactory elucidation is to be attained. We 
are thus brought to the consideration of the moral and 
religious relations of our young men, in other words, to 
the contemplation of, 

II. The young man of America as a moral agent. In 
this connection regard may be had, first, to his peculiar 
dangers, and, secondly, to his peculiar opportunities. 

Whatever theory we may see fit to adopt with respect 



THE YOUNG MEN OF AMERICA. 23 

to the culture of the understanding, few can doubt that 
the work of evolving and perfecting the moral sense is, 
in its inception, cotemporaneous with the earliest dawn- 
ings of intelligence, and is largely dependent for its 
accomplishment upon the tender, watchful and persistent 
care of natural guardians in the nursery and the family. 
The well-digested and faithfully-imparted precepts which 
mingle with secular teaching, and which find a more 
direct and special utterance in the Bible class and the 
Sunday school, are powerful, and never-to-be-omitted 
means of good, particularly to the homeless, and ne- 
glected ; but they are nevertheless more or less limited 
in their sphere of operation, contracted within narrow 
boundaries of time and place, and unable to derive- much 
support from that grand instructor — example. But home 
is, unfortunately, one of our least used and least appre- 
ciated educational agencies for the young of either sex, 
more especially the male ; a thousand malignant influ- 
ences combine to drive the young man from its secure 
asylum, many of them causes independent of his own 
volition, while home itself, there is reason to fear, he 
may not always find rich in those refining and strength- 
ening influences which it is both its privilege and duty 
to exert, but with its pure flame dimmed, or wholly 
extinguished, in the' fierce glare of ostentatious folly, or 
domestic estrangement and dissension. He is summoned, 



24 THE YOUNG MEN OF AMEKICA. 

moreover, often by absolute necessity, and always by 
public opinion, to mingle in the active business and con- 
cerns of life earlier than usual in other countries, and 
obliged, by the more equal distribution of social respon^ 
sibilities, to participate in the struggles of the outer world 
at an age when not a few of his cotemporaries elsewhere 
are still engaged in preparation for the encounter. He 
is thus thrown much upon his own resources, and becom- 
ing prematurely acquainted with the sweets of liberty 
and power, is apt to fancy himself emancipated from all 
control, human and divine, while the perilous contagion 
of vice is particularly dangerous to one at the same time 
vain of his own knowledge and strength, and keenly 
susceptible to the varied blandishments of temptation, 
and the magnetic sympathy of example ; occasional acts 
of indulgence gradually ripen into habits, and even the 
legitimate uses of recreation, both mental and bodily, 
degenerate into abuses. 

It will be inferred from what has been said, that the 
great moral peril of the young man in this country, the 
parent of many more, lies in the lack of self-control. 
Wanting in power over the evil passions and affections, 
the secret of whose mastery should have been implanted 
and enforced in infancy, excess becomes the normal, 
moderation the exceptional principle of conduct. This 
is no less conspicuous in the evils endured, than in 



THE YOUNG MEN OF AMERICA. 25 

the remedies administered ; extremes are combated by 
extremes, — men are to be rendered wise and virtuous 
by legal enactments, and hard, mechanical, superficial 
schemes are substituted for the natural and kindly opera- 
tion of those forces and instrumentalities prescribed by 
the Maker, for the regulation and perfecting of His work. 
The discipline of the passions and appetites must thus be 
contemplated from a religious point of view, if we seek 
to understand its true nature, methods and importance. 
That religious means and motives are the only ones to 
be relied on for compassing this end, is obvious from the 
fact that they alone are operative upon the hidden 
springs of thought and conduct, permeating and pervad- 
ing the whole inward life; for the self-control which 
arises from a mere desire of external conformity to re- 
ceived notions of right, and of making a decent show 
before the world, all which morality alone might and 
does inculcate, is not, it is quite unnecessary to say, of 
the kind here intended. For it is important not to nar- 
row down the graces of this self-control to certain nega- 
tive advantages, contenting ourselves with enumerating 
the evils from which it frees us, but rather to view it as 
being in itself a great and positive good, valuable &s a 
principle of action, and deserving of assiduous cultiva- 
tion for its own sake, whatever may be the opportunities 

for its exercise, or the tangible results attained by its aid. 

2 



26 THE YOUNG MEN OF AMERICA. 

How nobly such, a quality fills up the idea of a com- 
pleted manhood, as opposed to the condition of the 
lower orders of creation, unwitting nature's law; and 
incapable of moral accountability! How symmetrical 
and finely proportioned is the character gradually deve- 
loped under its influence, native defects repaired, native 
strength preserved and augmented by economical and 
judicious use, and every part trained to its proper func- 
tion in subordination to the main design ! How import- 
ant that the arbiters of political destiny should first gain 
the mastery over their own spirits ! How inglorious, in 
the contest in which we are called upon to engage, and 
on whose issue so much is at stake, will be the cam- 
paigns of him who parleys with spies, and holds counsel 
with traitors ! 

We have seen how the peculiar conditions and circum- 
stances of our national existence conspire to render the 
acquisition and exercise of this virtue more than ordi- 
narily rare and difficult, while it is, for precisely these 
reasons, more than ordinarily necessary. We have also 
seen that it must be early implanted, and that by reli- 
gious methods, if it is to be of permanent value and 
utility. How materially lightened would then be the 
labors of the reformer ; what diminution and modifica- 
tion would result in the objects and scope of modern 
reform ! The bounties of nature and providence, and 



THE YOUNG MEN OF AMEBICA. 27 

innumerable sources of innocent enjoyment and rational 
gratification, would less require the vigilant censorship 
of self-constituted and complacent guardians of public 
virtue ; and the remedial treatment which human depra- 
vity requires having thus been applied at the root and 
source of the malady, instead of being used to check the 
outward developments, success, if not rendered more 
certain, would at least have been sought by more rational 
and legitimate methods. 

But there remains another danger of quite another sort 
to the young American as a moral agent, a danger lurk- 
ing in the very heart of one of his dearest and most 
boasted privileges. The revealed will of God, one con- 
sistent, harmonious, unalterable law, committed to a 
united organism, His church, for perpetual dissemina- 
tion and preservation; — innumerable associations of indi- 
viduals bearing different names, and professing widely 
different doctrines, yet each claiming to be in possession 
of the whole counsel of God ; — such -is the strange, per- 
plexing problem presented for his solution. It is true 
that the particular bias imparted in childhood or early 
youth may, and often does, leave no room for over-curi- 
ous speculation, and diverts the spirit of private inquiry ; 
but to nearly all religious thinkers comes the desire, 
more or less constant and powerful, of personal explora- 
tion along the giddy and tortuous paths of theological 



28 THE YOUNG MEN OF AMERICA. 

science. His religious life must be, outwardly at least, 
identified with, some one of these organized bodies, while 
no prestige of political influence or ecclesiastical authority 
must interfere with his liberty of choice. Under such 
circumstances it is not strange that religious self-compla- 
cency or indifference should sometimes be witnessed ; 
that the mind, according to its more or less keen percep- 
tion of the absolutism and indivisibility of religious 
truth, should shrivel into bigotry, or bloat into latitudi- 
narianism, or that downright skepticism should be wel- 
comed as a happy escape from the chaos of doubts and 
fears environing belief. 

Hence, too, the pernicious error, that sincerity is the 
only material part of religious faith, or as it is commonly 
expressed, that it matters not what a man's peculiar belief 
may be, so long as he is sincere therein, and fully acts 
up to his conscientious convictions, — a doctrine whose 
thorough and consistent development would commit us to 
the indorsement of some of the most atrocious principles 
and practices which have disfigured the records of his- 
tory, and compel our admiration of men whose lives 
have been little else than a tissue of folly, weakness and 
crime. A more accurate understanding of the functions 
of conscience would show us, that in its healthy, unper- 
verted condition its promptings are entirely in harmony 
with those few and simple, yet all comprehensive divine 



THE YOUNG MEJST OF AMERICA. 29 

injunctions whose binding force and obligation are uni- 
versally acknowledged, which compose the soul and sub- 
stance of all religions, and without a theoretical acqui- 
escence in which, society would become disintegrated, 
and the social compact disannulled. That the voice of 
God in the soul should really contradict His revealed 
will is an assertion too impious and shocking to deserve 
a moment's thought, while we may solace ourselves with 
the reflection, that the points regarding which the teach- 
ings of Scripture and the dictates of enlightened reason 
are less unequivocal, are sufficiently numerous to render 
it wholly unnecessary to seek to enlarge the already 
almost limitless fields of inquiry over which this much- 
prized liberty of conscience may fitly and freely range. 
Multiplied and varied as are the forms of religious faith 
and worship, to each and every one is set bounds which 
it cannot pass ; to each appertains the inheritance of a 
divine revelation, and upon each are impressed certain 
features essential to its very existence as a religious sys- 
tem, and around which, as the fixed and central ideas in 
every creed are clustered the special tenets which distin- 
guish it from every other, — doctrines, it may be, of great 
importance as characteristic badges, but which are some- 
times only misconceived or undeveloped truths, whose 
antagonism not unfrequently lessens upon a closer inves- 
tigation and more careful comparison. The liberty of 



30 THE YOUNG MEN OF AMERICA. 

conscience which claims the right, in the just and proper 
exercise of the reasoning faculties, of prosecuting its 
reverent inquiries in this direction, and of testing what- 
* ever it meets by sound and acknowledged standards, is 
engaged in its legitimate function ; — overstepping this 
divinely-erected barrier, liberty degenerates into license, 
and its lofty claims and pretenses crumble away into 
worse than utter nothingness. 

We have a tacit recognition of these principles in the 
attitude assumed by the State, which declines all inter- 
ference with the rights and duties of its citizens in mat- 
ters spiritual, except so far as the manner of exercising 
the same may conflict with public order or municipal 
right. It assumes a degree of intelligence in the com- 
munity adequate to the proper use of religious as 'well as 
of political freedom ; that the rudimentary principles of 
the divine and human law are equally familiar, and the 
peculiar character of each as law fully understood. 
Upon the discussion of the many interesting topics 
respecting the relations of church and state it is impos- 
sible here to enter ; it may be that idiosyncrasies of tem- 
perament, of education, and of historical and tradi- 
tionary association have imparted some bias to our 
perceptions and judgments in matters of this sort, but 
however that may be, it is certain that nothing in the 
freedom which we enjoy, or in the consequent multipli- 



THE YOUNG MEN OF AMERICA. 31 

cation of the forms of religious belief, can justify the 
young American in the extravagant theories and un- 
founded conclusions into which he is liable to be 
betrayed by the ceaseless outcry about liberty of con- 
science, or still less excuse his neglect of any moral or 
religious duty. 

From such contemplations as these it is pleasant to 
turn to the opportunities of good, perhaps not less 
marked than the temptations to evil, which the peculiar 
religious condition of the country affords its young men. 
The seeds and elements of truth which exist in greater 
or less proportion in every denominational organism, we 
know must increase and develop, freeing themselves, 
little by little, from the admixture of error which now 
debases and retards their divine vitality, and gradually 
demolishing in the process the barriers which now sepa- 
rate those who see and know but in part, until the 
bestowal in fuller measure of knowledge, faith and love 
shall have brought about a religious unity as nearly per- 
fect as human imperfection, and the circumstances of our 
mundane existence will admit. For such an eliminative 
process it is difficult to conceive of a fairer field, or more 
auspicious influences than are here presented. The pre- 
ponderance of any one or more systems of doctrine is 
prevented, and a wholesome equipoise maintained, by 
the more equal distribution of religious forces and ener- 



32 , THE YOUNG MEN OF AMEEICA. 

gies. That charity which grows up between those who, 
differing in opinion, have faith in each other's honesty 
of purpose, and are on a perfect equality in the eye of 
the law and in the favor of society, has already worked, 
and is still working, results excellent in themselves, and 
rich with future promise. Upon the strong and deep- 
running current of this tendency of our religious life, 
congenial, in so many ways, and for so many reasons, to 
the ingenuous spirit of youth, the young man throws 
himself with a devotedness of purpose which, properly 
seconded and judiciously directed, cannot fail of happy 
consequences. The friendly rivalry, engendered in the 
contact of diverse systems of belief and worship, the 
necessity felt by each of making good its claim to Chris- 
tian sympathy and fellowship, and the consequent de- 
mand for the active and earnest co-operation of every 
worker within its pale, awaken his interest, and stimu- 
late his zeal. The fearful odds to be encountered in the 
contest with the opposing forces of worldliness serves 
but to rouse the manliness of his nature, to reinforce his 
powers of resistance, and to quicken the responsive thrill 
with which he listens to the apostolic injunction: "I 
write unto you, young men, because ye are strong." 
The ignorant are to be taught, — in his soul the fountains 
of knowledge, if less deep and various, are at least freshly 
unsealed, and for the most part uncontaminated with the 



THE YOUNG MEN OF AMERICA. 33 

bitter ingredients which maturing years shall perforce 
commingle; the needy and afflicted are to be relieved, — 
his warm and generous instincts are especially alive to 
every form of suffering ; the fallen are to be raised, the 
wavering reclaimed, the sore temptations which beset 
the path of the young are to be removed or counteracted, 
how valuable is the assistance, the friendly advice and 
companionship of those who have met and learned to 
master the same evil influences. The necessary routine 
duties which belong to the secular departments of eccle- 
siastical labor fall naturally to the share of those whose 
time is, perhaps, less valuable, and whose hands more 
ready, than is always the case with older men. 

The native power of example, always great, is indefi- 
nitely augmented by such a condition of things, and if 
we lament its evil effects, we should credit it with all the 
good which we owe to its instrumentality. Its operation 
is of course most plainly perceptible where great num- 
bers are congregated, — in cities, in the depots of trade 
and commerce, and in all populous marts, where the pur- 
suit of gain has gathered many into a common focus, 
and human life, with all things pertaining thereto, be- 
comes quickened and intensified. An encouraging sign 
is witnessed in the formation of associations of young 
men for religious and moral objects, on a similar plan to 

that of societies more immediately designed for intellec- 

2* 



34 THE YOUNG MEN OF AMEKICA. 

tual improvement, — a scheme which has thus far been 
attended with the happiest results. Eeligious principles 
early implanted, which the thousand distracting and dan- 
gerous influences of city life would otherwise have weak- 
ened or destroyed, are thus strengthened and preserved ; 
the young man, separated from home and friends, is 
brought into better companionship, and surrounded with 
associations of a higher character ; the spark of heavenly 
fire which in solitude might have been extinguished, is 
fanned into life, and in contact with suitable material 
kindles into a warm and brilliant flame. As a continua- 
tion into a most critical period of life of early religious 
nurture, supplying to some extent the lack of home and 
its protections, the Young Men's Christian Association 
takes rank among the most efficient and important reli- 
gious agencies of the time, doing its work in an unobtru- 
sive, but effectual manner; acting upon a class of per- 
sons who occupy a certain situation where its interposi- 
tion is most timely and valuable, and bringing into play 
much intelligent and benevolent activity which had else 
been lost or misdirected. 

Akin to this, is the young American's duty and privi- 
lege in the application of religious correctives to politico- 
social evils. The axiom that knowledge and virtue 
are the only safeguards of a state, means simply that 
nations, like individuals, are dependent on the fulness 



THE YOUNG MEN OF AMERICA. 35 

of the sacred and secular instruction they receive, to ena- 
ble them to meet the duties, and overcome the dangers 
of their position. Education of the latter sort it is in the 
power, as it is generally the duty of government to pro- 
vide : many obstacles interpose to render the inculcation 
of religious truth by the machinery of municipal regula- 
tions a matter of much practical difficulty. The organic 
law in many of the confederated republics of our Union 
has extended the blessings of knowledge to all alike, ■ 
while the voluntary effort and organization of indivi- 
duals have introduced the institutions and benefits of the 
Christian religion over at least an equal area. The state, 
though not taking any immediate part in these labors, 
indirectly countenances and assists them in every way 
which is consistent with her pledged religious neutrality, 
and directly recognizes the truth, and bases her polity 
upon the precepts of the Gospel. Further than this she 
may not go, but this is only the husk and outline of 
what Christianity should be as a political power, a great 
nutritive and conservative social element ; what it is we 
may ask ourselves, and trust to our own observation for 
the answer ; certainly the source of immense advantage, 
yet very far from vindicating her just claim to rank as 
the central force and vitalizing ingredient of civilization. 
And why is this, but that her precepts are not practi- 
cally regarded as of equal importance, in the curricu- 



36 THE YOUNG MEN OF AMERICA. 

lum of learning with instruction in secular knowledge ? 
Well-educated men, in the common acceptation of the 
term, we have in abundance, but a good education is not 
the sole staple for the production of patriots, of states- 
men, or even of citizens. There are no more astute or 
influential demagogues, no men more selfish and indiffer- 
ent, content to forego all public duty in the pursuit 
of private gain, than are to be found among those whose 
intellectual harness gleams impenetrably bright. There 
must be preaching and teaching out of the pulpit as well 
as in it. There is work for the laity as well as for the 
clergy, by precept and example, by voice and by pen, by 
advice and by assistance, by every avenue of influence, 
direct and indirect, to fill up and complete the scheme 
of ■ Christian instruction, establishing it upon a scale 
equal in magnitude and usefulness to that whereby pro- 
vision is made for mental growth and nourishment, and 
realizing thus what we cannot doubt to have been the 
hope and expectation of the founders of our constitu- 
tional order. The church can deal only with the indivi- 
dual conscience, and in no other way, with us, can she 
oppose herself to the inflowing tide of political corrup- 
tion and moral and social degeneracy, than by the volun- 
tary efforts of those who will give their time and their 
talents to the work. The selfish and dishonorable de- 
vices, the unscrupulous turpitude which disgrace the 



THE YOUNG MEN OF AMERICA. 37 

career of our public life both in the givers and receivers 
of its rewards, and sully our national honor, is not 
because we are ignorant of our duty, but because a 
cloud of moral darkness, which leads us to regard such a 
state of things as inevitable, or even harmless in political 
affairs, has settled down upon the land ; and because we 
have a large class of men, many of them young men, 
particularly numerous in cities, ignorant in many ways, 
and degraded by vicious courses of many kinds, but 
whose weight as a mischievous and disturbing social and 
political element, lies in their almost absolute exclusion 
from the pale of Christian interest, Christian influence, 
and Christian labor. Among these men, and still more 
among those who are growing up to take their places, is 
the true field of the patriot philanthropist. The votes 
which are now bartered for official indulgence shown to 
offences against the well-being of society, carelessly or 
selfishly cast, or coolly neglected, must be restored to the 
hands of freemen jealous of political dignity and welfare, 
and not only asking no indulgence for their own, but 
resolved to curb the evil passions of others ; the conta- 
gion of a high moral purpose, of just and elevated views 
of our public responsibilities, and of the true conditions 
and objects of self-government, must come to infect the 
whole community, Much of this work can be done, 
much of it can only be done by young men ; the perse- 



\J 



38 THE YOUNG MEN OF AMERICA. 

vering employment of personal influence and example is 
mainly to be depended on, but the controlling motive 
which must govern all effort, which must animate the 
hearts and souls of the teachers, and from them pass 
over into those of the taught, lies not in reasons of pub- 
lic policy, or even in merely moral considerations, — it 
must spring from the very deepest religious conviction, 
the purest religious principle, the deeper and purer the 
more base and degraded are they who need its interposi- 
tion. 

A practical and universal recognition must be estab- 
lished of the truth, that God is with us nationally as well 
as individually, and that it is only in keeping His com- 
mandments that we may look for public, as well as pri- 
vate welfare. 

III. We come next to the discussion of those rela- 
tions which grow out of business, profession, or occupa- 
tion in life ; or, as it may be otherwise expressed, to the 
consideration of 

THE YOUNG- MAN OF AMERICA AS AN INDUSTRIAL AGENT. 

That there is work for him to do — genuine hard work, 
and plenty of it, — work for the hand and for the brain ; 
work which he may find congenial or distasteful ; work 
which comes to him from others, or which he has pro- 



THE YOUNG MEN OF AMERICA. 39 

vided for himself; work which may yield a rich or a 
scanty return, is one of the earliest facts which impresses 
itself upon the mind of the American. While to the 
great majority, necessity has pronounced the decree of 
constant toil, the comparative few who are nurtured in 
affluence usually feel it both convenient and desirable 
to render at least an outward conformity to the prevail- 
ing current of public opinion. So frequent, sudden, and 
complete are the revolutions of fortune with us, as 
scarcelv to have allowed of the formation of a class 
securely seated in the enjoyment of an absolute and cul- 
tivated leisure, and it may well be doubted, not only 
whether there be any class, but any individuals, even, 
among us so situated as not to derive a positive and 
direct advantage from the knowledge and practice of 
some useful and honest calling. Labor has thus acquired 
a dignity altogether beyond what has elsewhere and 
heretofore been associated with it ; many pursuits, which, 
were once hardly considered compatible with a ' conven- 
tional respectability are now in high favor, and boast the 
assiduous devotion of some of the most gifted minds in 
the community. There is little feeling of any especial 
prestige connected with certain employments, for though 
it is true that those which demand or imply the posses- 
sion of more or less learning and intellectual training 
have here, as elsewhere, the weight of influence, and a 



40 THE YOUNG MEN OF AMERICA. 

freely acknowledged superiority of function ; yet these 
qualifications are too common and accessible to be made 
the basis of any extraordinary claims. Indeed, so gene- 
ral is the diffusion of information, and so large the mea- 
sure of natural intelligence and skill, as to elevate the 
character and widen the sphere of almost all the several 
avocations, and render the transition from those of a 
lower to those of a higher grade easy and constant. We 
may regret the unstable and variable habits, mental and 
bodily, which these facilities for change of occupation 
tend to occasion, while we acknowledge the passage 
from the duties and rewards of the humbler, to those of 
the more difficult and responsible calling, or even the 
exchange of one pursuit for another, requiring prepara- 
tion not wholly dissimilar in kind or degree, to be more 
in harmony with the genius and temper, not merely of 
our country, but of our age, than an inflexible persist- 
ence in an unsuitable and uncongenial career from pusil- 
lanimity, indolence, or unworthy pride, and that a man 
thus earlier reaches, and better preserves his true level, 
ascertains his actual industrial value, and accomplishes 
his portion of the world's work, than when less free to 
exercise a careful and mature selection. 

The consideration of the young American's peculiar 
position and duties as a member of the great industrial 
commonwealth, the true method and spirit in which 



THE YOUNG MEN" OF AMERICA. 41 

these duties should be discharged, and the real objects to 
be aimed at in their performance, comes home to us as a 
thing of no small importance. Especially at the present 
time, when the questions — how are we laboring, and 
what is the final good which we propose as the end of all 
our exertions — are so pointedly brought before us by the 
many and terrible disasters which we are witnessing on 
every side, — when the bright and well-founded expecta- 
tions of youth, the prosperous harvests of the riper in 
years, and the long-gathering accumulations of age have 
become involved in a common ruin, and a devastating 
terRpest has swept over the business interests of the 
country, leaving behind the disheartening evidences of 
its fury in prostrated energies, disappointed hopes, scat- 
tered fortunes, and darkened homes. Well knowing 
that we must look many ways, and examine with pa- 
tient and long-continued research for the causes of these 
melancholy results, we cannot close our eyes to the 
parallel fact, that a large share of the prosecution and 
active management of the business concerns of the 
country has of late, especially in the newer portions of 
the republic, been in the hands of those not yet arrived 
at maturity. The American, if he possess no other 
birthright, soon becomes conscious of his heirship to 
that species of public confidence and favor which is not 
averse to the substantial encouragement of youth, the 



42 THE YOUNG MEN OF AMERICA. 

result, as it might seem, of a wide-spread and almost 
instinctive sense of the need of those qualities with which 
it is believed to be especially gifted, — an inheritance 
which the fortunate possessor, with the ardent impetu- 
osity of his age, eagerly grasps, and hastens to enjoy to 
the utmost. He is thus half-enticed, half-driven to the 
front of the battle, and not unfrequently finds himself 
invested with responsibilities requiring a veteran experi- 
ence, and a maturity of judgment beyond his years, the 
natural consequence of which is either a precocious de- 
velopment of the required powers, liable to be succeeded 
by a premature decay, or else a very partial and imper- 
fect realization of highly raised expectations ; the for- 
mer being, perhaps, the more common, as the result for 
which there are many predisposing causes ; — we have 
thus grown accustomed to seeing the stations which 
might be thought proper only to the fathers in posses- 
sion of the children, to hear the words of grave and 
confident judgment, which age alone seemed competent 
to utter, on the lips of youth, and to find the evil as 
well as the useful and valuable experiences which time 
confers cleverly counterfeited by juvenile pretenders. 

If this be, as some have believed, a deep-seated and 
dangerous social disease, and one among the many 
causes of recent financial calamities, we cannot visit it 
with too severe reprobation, or apply ourselves too soon 



THE YOUNG MEN OF AMERICA. 43 

to the work of reform. An unsightly and threatening 
sore it assuredly is, but however great may be our vexa- 
tion or our evil forebodings, it is not impossible that it 
may be classed among those disorders which work their 
own cure, leaving the patient sounder than before ; 
indeed, its phenomena are perhaps only the excrescences 
and crudities of a providentially-appointed system of 
political and industrial development. The leading part 
which the young man is called upon to assume in con- 
ducting this development implies the existence at once 
of a peculiar class of duties, and of a complementary 
class of capacities ; it bears witness to the hopeful ardor, 
the facile skill, the constructive energy, the sympathetic 
zeal marshalled for the encounter of untried and unex- 
pected difficulties, of tasks of unusual magnitude, and of 
problems requiring new formulas for their solution ; it 
infuses something of patriotic purpose into the routine 
of common employments, and if he is sometimes be- 
trayed by it into a boastful egotism, it affords him at the 
same time abundant extenuation. To develop the re- 
sources and nurse the strength and glory of his country, 
is by no means a forgotten object, or an unfamiliar con- 
sideration, though one which we could wish to see, in its 
best and highest aspects, still more generally entertained 
and acted on. The young merchant should see not 
merely the ventures of private enterprise in the ships 



44 THE YOUNG MEN OF AMERICA. 

which he sends across the deep, but the messengers and 
ministers of a commerce which is bearing the flag, and 
introducing the productions of his native land to the 
remotest corners of the globe, and feel himself to be a 
creator and regulator of a code of rules and principles 
calculated to meet the peculiar conditions and require- 
ments of a vast and rapidly-expanding commercial sys- 
tem. Extreme solicitude is befitting those who are 
entering upon a professional career, that the standard of 
learning, of usefulness, and of scholarly and gentlemanly 
culture is not lowered by reason of great numerical 
accessions ; for the young divine, the young lawyer, the 
young physician, a wide and promising field awaits the 
tillage of diligent hands and tempers imbued with the 
spirit of conservatism, and reform in just and happy mix- 
ture ; while a familiar acquaintance with the wisdom of 
antiquity, and a due reverence for grim-visaged prece- 
dent must supply the foundation and framework of his 
professional edifice ; its finish, and the details of its 
arrangement, in short, the whole scheme of its adaptation 
to the needs and idiosyncrasies of modern American 
civilization remains for individual genius, industry, and 
acumen. The same is also true of divers other occupa- 
tions which require the union of theoretical knowledge 
with practical talent ; there is, in fact, hardly an}^ calling, 
however humble and subordinate, which does not impose 



THE YOUNG MEN OF AMERICA. 45 

upon the young American engaged in it special obliga- 
tions and responsibilities. 

We are pre-eminently a hard-working people, labori- 
ous alike from temperament and necessity ; the convic- 
tion that toil is to be the purchase of our national apo- 
theosis is general ; the strength and power of bone, and 
brain, and muscle, and their faculty of continuous and 
profitable, nay, more, of early and rapid action, is the 
grand idol of our social worship ; hence erroneous ideas 
respecting the value, employment, and true economy of 
time. It is deemed desirable that the boy should early 
commence, and continue with unintermitting industry, 
laying the foundations of his future career, that the spe- 
cial training which it requires should immediately follow, 
to be undergone with equal assiduity, and that little, if 
any, pause or breathing-time should be allowed so long 
as aught of mental or physical ability remains. One of 
the necessary consequences of this is seen in the want of 
thoroughness and permanence in the attainments them- 
selves, and the superficial mode of their acquisition ; in 
our zeal and haste to lengthen the catalogue of our posi- 
tive qualifications, we overlook the important truth, 
that, within certain limits, the broader the basis, the 
more careful, judicious and catholic the taste displayed 
in the selection of materials, and the more deliberate the 
process of construction, the more durable and sightly the 



46 THE YOUNG MEN OF AMERICA. 

edifice becomes ; that the human mind is not simply a 
receptacle of a certain number of facts, to be stored away 
for use as occasion may require, but a wonderful auto- 
matic power, a mysterious and vital organism, whose 
value and usefulness is dependent rather upon the range 
and flexibility which it has acquired, the readiness with 
which it adapts itself to, and the force and persistency 
which it can bring to bear upon any particular subject, 
or class of subjects, and the comprehensive and copious 
energy which it evinces, — in a single word, upon its 
discipline, than upon the number of its positive attain- 
ments. A man is none the worse physician, tradesman, 
engineer, architect, lawyer, artist, merchant, or mechanic 
for an early and devoted cultivation of aesthetic, scien- 
tific or literary tastes, for making himself familiar with 
any of the wonderful, curious, or beautiful works of 
nature or human skill, for attentively studying the 
strange and instructive lessons of history, or for treading 
with reverent and ever-new delight in the footsteps of a 
wise and beneficent Creator, as displayed by the research 
which unfolds to us so many of the secrets of the visible 
and invisible universe. The common round of daily 
toil is then approached with different feelings, engaged 
in with a different spirit, and finished with another sort 
of satisfaction than before, — it is no longer a wearisome, 
mechanical drudgery, but an interesting and pleasurable 



THE YOUNG MEN OF AMERICA. 47 

exercise of the awakened faculties. The work, too, is 
more successfully as well as more pleasantly performed ; 
unexpected analogies and facilities present themselves, 
hidden resemblances are disclosed, familiar rules and 
principles are invested with fresh and larger meanings, 
newer and better methods and results replace the old. 
Or, if the stated avocation be distasteful or uncongenial, 
the brief intervals of release from its exactions are so 
many golden opportunities for the admission of enno- 
bling and refining influences, and the gratification of 
elevated tastes, instead of being spent in apathetic lan- 
guor, or debasing pleasures; the appointed tasks are 
resumed with invigorated powers, to be despatched with 
an industry that shall soon purchase another interval of 
well-earned and precious leisure. 

It is exceedingly important to remember, in the midst 
of this hurrying, impatient age, the value of a large and 
generous culture in the humblest fields of human labor, 
as well as in the so-called liberal professions. Our coun- 
try never stood more in need of really and thoroughly 
educated men, men of rounded and healthy mental con- 
stitution, who can look many ways, and perceive the 
many sides of every question ; neither rash nor timid, 
but with every nerve braced, every sense on the alert, 
and every faculty ready for instant action ; men, who, 
whatever may be their particular calling, have made it 



48 THE YOUNG MEN OF AMERICA. 

their servant, not their master, and can grasp the rela- 
tive bearings of kindred and diverse pursuits, who can 
at pleasure point the glass to one especial orb, or survey 
with comprehensive eye the studded firmament. Though 
we can hardly be considered amenable to the charge of 
narrowness or illiberality of temper, or reckoned defi- 
cient in versatility or appreciative power, we are lack- 
ing, nevertheless, in that affluence of mental habit, that 
far-reaching scope of information which expands and 
dignifies our distinctive employment, which removes it 
the farthest from an unreasoning, and approximates it 
most closely to a rational process, which infuses, (to speak 
it reverently,) into the round of our daily and necessary 
duty somewhat of that creative effort which betokens the 
divine origin of the human soul, and practically recog- 
nizes and illustrates the native beauty and nobility of 
labor. 

IV. The last class of relations to which our attention 
will be directed, includes those which are of a literary 
and scientific character ; it may be generalized under the 
style of 

THE YOUNG MAN OF AMERICA INTELLECTUALLY 

CONSIDERED. 

With us, as has already been remarked, the mind is 



THE YOUNG MEN OF AMERICA. 49 

perhaps the best cared for of any part of our nature, and 
the attempt has been made to point out some of the 
causes and consequences of this fact ; our republican in- 
stitutions, and prominent among them, our system of 
popular education, the free intercourse, keen and active 
competition of our business and social life, and the uni- 
versal recognition and substantial advantages afforded to 
intellectual culture, have raised it to a high place in pub- 
lic estimation, fostering and stimulating its growth. It 
must, however, be confessed, that as yet many of its 
forms are such as bear rather upon the practical concerns 
and interests of life, and that in its more abstract and 
aesthetic branches much still remains to be accomplished ; 
hence the earnestness and directness of tone percepti- 
ble in our literature, and the comparative absence of 
works of philosophic and speculative thought. 

The literary tastes of a people are not inaptly mir- 
rored in those of its young men, who, in a country like 
our own, both lead and follow the popular judgment. 
The description of productions most readily welcomed 
by them, and in general by the American public, well 
illustrates the position that literary effort tends simulta- 
neously in two directions, the one coincident with, the 
other reactionary from prevailing national traits. Next 
to the pleasure which our countrymen derive from move- 
ment and action, is that obtainable from the knowledge 

3 



50 THE YOUNG MEN OF AMERICA. 

of what others have done or are doing, or by what 
methods we may, to the best advantage, direct our ener- 
gies ; the history of our own country and of those from 
which we derive our origin, the narratives of travel and 
discovery, biographies, the complexities of statecraft, and 
the records of inventive genius and skill possess for 
many almost an exclusive interest ; they carry into litera- 
ture that absorbing devotion to the real and the actual 
characteristic of our age and nation, they measure the 
worth of what they read by the closeness of its adherence 
to fact, and apply the criterion of practical utility as their 
chief canon of criticism. On the other hand, to minds 
of a different organization the material and realistic ten- 
dencies of the world without serve but to quicken into 
life a world within, a world where the harsh contrasts, 
the uninviting duties, the stern truths and stubborn facts 
of this have no place, a realm which is " of imagination 
all compact, " peopled only with unrealities and shadows, 
and governed by the delicate, etherial fancies, the subtile 
caprices of the individual mind. Such find their conge- 
nial literary aliment either in works of pure fiction, or in 
those affording wide scope for the imaginative faculties. 
To one or the other of these schools may be referred 
nearly or quite all our existing literary tastes, so far as 
they bear the impress of nationality, and in each of them 
we find, among the names of long-acknowledged cele- 



THE YOUNG MEN OF AMERICA. 51 

brity, not a few of those who are still in the early 
freshness of their powers. 

But the two favorite vehicles alike for the communica- 
tion and formation of the young American's literary 
taste, are, oratory, and the periodical publication, using 
the terms in their Americanized sense, understanding by 
the former the oral address of public assemblies in the 
church, the lecture-room, the court-house, at the political 
meeting or the festive gathering, and by the latter the 
written address to a public to some extent of ascertained 
numbers and sentiment though the regular and recog- 
nized medium of the review, the magazine or the news- 
paper. We have said that we used these terms in their 
Americanized sense, and that because although the names 
of the things are common, the things themselves, as here 
existent, have a character of their own. Few, save those 
of native birth, can comprehend the singular magic of 
the spoken word, the face to face address for an American 
audience ; everywhere, indeed, the peculiar power of 
speech is practically seen and felt, but here it is espe- 
cially potent ; we are fond of asking the why and the 
wherefore, we require to know the rationale of every 
subject presented, and woe be to him who cannot instantly 
and off-hand satisfy the inquirer ; we meet on an equal 
footing, and have many experiences in common, concern- 
ing which we must compare notes and interchange opi 



52 THE YOUNG MEN OF AMERICA. 

nions. We have, moreover, an hereditary proneness to 
the exercise of the tongue, a cacoethes loquendi, which the 
resources of typographical art seem rather to encou- 
rage than to repress ; — a larger number, indeed, is often 
brought within reach of the popular orator by means of 
the eye than by the ear. All these modes of address 
have become institutional ; they are ingrafted upon the 
habits, and inwoven with the life of our people. 

The periodical, also, whether the oracular review, the 
lighter and less pretentious magazine, or the gazette, de- 
voted to the topics of the daj r , exhibits distinctive na- 
tional characteristics. Thousands, who find neither time 
nor inclination for continuous and systematic reading, as 
well as most of those who do, desire to place themselves 
thoroughly en rapport with the sayings and doings of the 
world ; extended business interests are more or less iden- 
tified with the rapid and easy dissemination of intelli- 
gence, and the trade of politics as at present pursued 
would languish and decline without the aid thus afforded. 
Wants such as these have created the American news- 
paper, and whatever may be said of our ignorance of the 
art of journalizing, we may congratulate ourselves on the 
possession of abundant materials, and ample facilities ibr 
future improvement. Magazine literature, though inju- 
riously affected, and its standard of excellence lowered 
by the amount of literary capital bestowed upon the 



THE YOUNG MEN OF AMERICA. 53 

public journals, their number and cheapness, and also by 
the attempted monopoly of the higher order of talent by 
the review, has of late acquired a higher tone, and 
afforded employment for the ablest pens. Of the differ- 
ent kinds of periodical literature the review is perhaps 
the least affected by national idiosyncrasies ; the science 
of criticism is little modified by difference of situation 
and circumstance, and a certain similarity of mental 
endowment is usually observable among those who have 
applied themselves to this department of letters. 

It needs but little acquaintance with the condition, 
character, habits of thought and intellectual status of the 
young men of America, to understand how and why 
it is that the use of these channels of communication 
between the individual and the public is especially con- 
genial, at once meeting special proclivities and capabili- 
ties, and moulding them into certain characteristic and 
unmistakable shapes. The number of young men who 
incline to launch in solitary state their personal ventures 
upon the sea of authorship is not large, but where shall 
we find the American who has not, during the period of 
adolescence, held forth at the club, the caucus or the 
lyceum, or made his debut in the newspaper or the maga- 
zine, to say nothing of the young and popular orators of 
the pulpit and the forum ? It is apparent that the lite- 
rary tastes, not only of its younger members, but of the 



54 THE YOUNG MEN OF AMERICA. 

whole community, are to a considerable extent in pro- 
cess of development, in obedience to influences ema- 
nating from the sources named. For the character of 
these tastes those gifted with the power to carry into 
captivity the minds of hearers or readers must hold 
themselves largely accountable. Plentiful as are the 
pure and elevated models, both native and foreign, it 
must be remembered that they are not, as a general 
thing, thrust into the pathway of daily and ordinary ex- 
perience, while low and vitiated propensities, in litera- 
ture as well as in ethics, seem to be almost self-supplied 
with suitable food. There are certain dangers, both 
literary and moral, inherent in the very nature of these 
favorite modes of gratifying the intellectual cravings of 
our countrymen. The gift of eloquence is not so uni- 
versal, nor its criteria so generally understood, that the 
pompous declaimer, the flowery rhetorician, may not 
sometimes iisurp the functions, and purloin the honors 
of the really eloquent man; "the pen of the ready 
writer" is not always the instrument either of present 
satisfaction to the judicious and reflective, or the source 
of permanent and essential benefit. One hand busied in 
petty and trivial occupations, the other grasping the 
skirts of great designs, and laboring at the wheels of 
empire, — the thoughts now given to little cares and 
necessary duties, and anon bounding upward to the con- 



THE YOUNG MEN OF AMERICA. 55 

templation of lofty and magnificent destinies, — the cir- 
cumstances of our national condition have made us ame- 
nable for grave offences in our schools, both of literary 
and oratorical effort, which call loudly for reform. It is 
to be feared that we cannot always plead their ignorant or 
involuntary commission, or, worse yet, that their evil effect 
is limited to corrupted literary tastes. Of our books, ma- 
gazines, and speeches, those which, entail upon us in the 
reading or the hearing, to say the least, a sad waste of 
time, are almost innumerable, and little else than the 
open or secret insinuation of mental and moral poison is 
to be reckoned as the object and result of many more. 

To her young men our country appeals for the remedy 
of what is here amiss. Their post is in the foremost rank, 
they and those who are growing up to fill their places 
will soon constitute the entire force of masculine workers 
in the field of American letters. To them knowledge 
has opened wide her portals, — the past is rich with noble 
incentives and exemplars, and the present gladdened, 
indeed, with the earnest of better things ; all that educa- 
tion, culture, the largest opportunities can give are theirs, 
and society awaits them with a smile of encouragement 
and hopeful expectation. We cannot doubt of their 
prompt, unanimous, and hearty response to the call ; in 
truth, much has already been accomplished, and a little 
self-complacency seems almost pardonable in view of the 



56 - THE YOUNG MEN OF AMEKICA. 

assistance which they have rendered in elevating the na- 
tion to its present enviable position in many departments 
of literature ; progress in these, however, as well as in 
her other legitimate walks, must continue to be their 
aim, avoiding, on the one hand, undue partiality for, and 
on the other, hasty and dogmatic condemnation of any. 
He, for instance, who, in view of the manifold absurdi- 
ties, incongruities, and evil influences which have ga- 
thered about the modern novel, hurls his indiscriminate 
anathemas against all works of fiction, and even against 
fictitious writing in the abstract, is arguing down a law 
of our nature, and enunciating a proposition which car- 
ried out to a full and consistent development would rob 
us of a large portion of the accumulated intellectual trea- 
sures of all nations and languages, would sweep away 
nine-tenths of the poetic wealth of every age and people, 
and blot out from our own literature no inconsiderable 
portions of holy writ, the dramas of Shakespeare, the im- 
mortal narratives of Bunyan and Defoe, with hosts of 
other names almost equally endeared. A wider and 
juster comprehension of the human organism would dic- 
tate a wiser course of action ; it would recognize in fiction 
an enginery for good of incalculable power, and in the 
taste for it a divinely implanted faculty to be carefully 
trained and directed, not stupidly thwarted and opposed ; 
it would go further, down even to the fundamental truth 



THE YOUNG MEN OF AMERICA. 57 

underlying all fiction, the truth to which fiction is perpe- 
tually holding out a helping hand, the truth which in our 
present blindness and ignorance we call impossible, — as 
indeed under certain given conditions it is, — and for 
loyalty to which fiction is covered with ignominy and 
dishonor. 

The much- vexed topics of a "national literature" and 
a " national art," so-called, and the duties, present and 
prospective, of the young men of the country in its con- 
struction and preservation, is one which challenges our 
attention, though it can here receive but a brief and ina- 
dequate discussion." 

To stamp a character upon any or all the depart- 
ments of art, of science, or of literature ; to mould and 
fashion them in forms which shall be at once excellent 
and idiomatic, appeals perhaps even more strongly to the 
pride of nations than to that of individuals., The credit 
resulting from such achievements in the former case is 
of that convenient kind which is capable of almost inde- 
finite subdivision, and which establishes a sort of bro- 
therhood between the poet, the artist, the philosopher, 
and him who, unambitious and hopeless of personal 
distinction, can call them countrymen. We may style 
the feeling vanity, or a generalized egotism if we please, 
but we muse admit its results to be happy and honorable 
in the main ; it is the frequent parent of patient effort, it 

3* 



58 THE YOUNG MEN OF AMERICA. 

sweetens the pleasure of success while adding to the 
mortification of failure ; it quickens the sense of beauty 
and the appreciation of talent ; it knits closer and firmer 
the spirit and the substance of patriotism ; it mingles its 
subtle stimulus with the more selfish incentives of the 
man of genius, bidding him identify his country's glories 
with his own, honoring him in her, and her in him. 

But there are serious errors into which this patriotic 
sentiment is apt to lead us, among which may be named 
the mistake of believing catholic and immutable princi- 
ples capable of change and localization, and of overlook- 
ing some of the primary conditions upon which truth 
and beauty have consented to dwell among us ; of for- 
getting that the processes of artistic, scientific and lite- 
rary development move onward in obedience to fixed 
and uniform laws, the subjects and conditions of whose 
operation are alterable, but not the laws themselves. 
Neither may we attempt' to accelerate the wise delays 
and prudent reticence of nature, seeking to shake the 
ripened fruit from blossoming trees, in disregard of the 
truth which history everywhere teaches, that charac- 
teristic eminence in science, art, or literature is usually 
among the last and proudest of national triumphs. Reli- 
gion, laws, commerce, language, climate, productions, a 
thousand circumstances, fix at the outset their distin- 
guishing imprint upon a nation, but her purely intellec- 



THE YOUNG MEN OF AMERICA. 59 

tual trophies are later won, they are the tokens of 
maturing and culminating greatness, they are sometimes, 
alas ! the precursors or the companions of decay. 

There are those, however, who, admitting the general 
truth of this, maintain that with us the case is different ; 
we have inherited, say they, the accumulated results of 
time : we have entered into the labors of those who 
have preceded us, and started upon our career in many 
respects the equals if not the superiors of our contempo- 
raries in other lands. Let us approve ourselves among 
the nations a power entitled to the same rank in letters 
and arts, which we have already secured in the various 
fields of practical effort ; let us reflect the phenomena of 
our social, political, religious, and domestic life in new. 
theories and schools of aesthetic culture. 

In appeals like these, which the ambitious and hopeful 
heart of youth is wont to "urge with especial zeal, and' 
which are reiterated with similar persistency from divers 
quarters, truth and fallacy are blended in a manner 
which renders their separation a delicate and difficult 
task. While it is undeniable that whatever of literary, 
artistic, or scientific reputation has been gained by any 
people has, in a certain sense, been born of circum- 
stances peculiar to it as a nation, and is representative 
of some traits of national character, it is equally true 
that this reputation is due to the strict and faithful 



60 THE YOUNG MEN OF AMEEICA. 

observance of rules which are of universal and perpetual 
obligation, and to the diligent use of means and mate- 
rials which antecedent experience supplies. The close 
connection and succession thus established between the 
different periods and kindreds of the world's history is 
especially noticeable in the fine arts ; the great object of 
each of these being the expression of the beautiful, and the 
excitation of lofty or pleasurable ideas, it is obvious that 
all other purposes must be wholly subordinate and sub- 
sidiary, and that such naturalization as each may receive 
comes only from the slow infiltration and infusion of a 
nation's interior life and character, and not from any dry, 
mechanical and sudden reproduction of its exterior 
phases. Such a process, moreover, presupposes a sus- 
ceptibility to, and appreciation of the beautiful, and this 
again implies wealth, leisure, taste, and an acquaintance 
more or less thorough with the canons of critical science. 
The vast variety and extent of our natural scenery, em- 
bracing forests verdant with the livery of summer, or 
glowing with the rainbow hues of autumn ; interminable 
plains; majestic rivers and mountains; the song of birds ; 
the harmonies of the cataract and of the wind-swept 
forest ; the graceful elegance or massive grandeur seen in 
the shape of tree, rock, animal, and flower ; the innume- 
rable beauties of sight, sound, and color lavished with 
such profusion on every side had awakened the admira- 



THE YOUNG MEN OF AMERICA. 61 

tion and stimulated the rude mimicry of the savage for 
ages before the civilized man who supplanted him had 
commenced developing the butterfly of art from the 
chrysalis of imitation ; but it is only in so far as he 
proves his right to the name that the artist must expect 
his countrymen to forget, over his Niagaras, his dying 
Indians, his American epics or operas, the treasures of 
an older culture and a larger experience ; to do other- 
wise would be no less an injustice to themselves than to 
him, an injustice which finds, perhaps, its only parallel 
in the ignorance or prejudice which ignores as being of 
native growth those budding artistic powers and faculties 
which require for their fruitage the tempered rays of a 
judicious and discriminating encouragement. 

Recollecting that the methods and aims of literature 
are often coincident with, though not always limited by 
those of art, much of what has been said may be found 
applicable to the former as well as to the latter. The 
important difference, however, immediately suggests 
itself that for the purely ideal symbolism of art is here 
substituted a written or spoken language as the medium 
of expression ; language thus becomes the primary and 
natural point of distinction between the literature of dif- 
ferent nations, so that, in one sense, a civilized people 
which possesses a language, possesses also a literature of 
its own. Our own country, however, presents the ano- 



62 THE YOUNG MEN OF AMERICA. 

malous spectacle of a large and independent nation 
whose language is identical with that of another nation 
wholly distinct and separate from it ; the immediate 
inference from this simple fact is, that there must, of 
necessity, be a connection of some sort between the lite- 
rature of the two ; and if we add to these premises, that 
the younger nation is an offshoot from the older, with 
similar religion, laws, habits, and customs ; that a close 
and constant intercourse exists ; that a good understand- 
ing and acts of international courtesy and kindness are 
gradually but surely taking the place of hostility, jea- 
lousies, and injuries, it is at once apparent that we have 
very materially narrowed the basis on which to erect 
what can be styled a national literature. In what sense, 
then, may such an achievement be deemed practicable ; 
what may be regarded as the present or probable future 
characteristics of a distinctive American literature ? 

Our reply to this question is perhaps anticipated in 
what has already been said. As we see in the face of 
the child first the likeness to that of the parent, and 
afterwards detect the points of difference which go to 
make up the individuality of the countenance, so may 
we observe in our literature of native origin so many 
traces and indications of family likeness to that of the 
mother country, that its idiosyncracies are brought into 
view by being projected, as it were, upon this back- 



THE YOUNG MEN OF AMEEICA. 63 

ground. Setting aside the numerous tribe of direct imi- 
tators of popular English authors, we find an involuntary 
harmony of thought and feeling, and not unfrequently a 
pointed resemblance of style and expression between 
our own writers and those of Great Britain, while with all 
this is mingled so much that is purely and thoroughly 
American, as almost alwaj^s to impart an unmistakable 
character to the literature emanating from this side the 
water. The most noticeable differences exist, perhaps, in 
our prose works of fiction. The tale or story has always 
been one of the earliest forms in which the literary genius 
of a people has developed ; drawing its inspiration chiefly 
from the objects and circumstances under the immediate 
knowledge and observation of the narrator, and dealing 
with every-day habits and occurrences, it reproduces for 
us the life and manners of the time with a kind of pho- 
tographic fidelity. Our own fictitious literature forms no 
exception to the rule ; based for the most part upon 
events of historical or traditionary interest, or illustrative 
of social, religious, political, or domestic institutions and 
peculiarities, it is indebted comparatively little to that of 
any other country, and with all its defects, its sins of 
omission and commission, its graver and its lighter 
errors, must be admitted to afford an interesting picture 
of national traits and institutions, and to constitute, at 
present, the most strictly national department of our lite- 



64 THE YOUNG MEN OF AMERICA. 

rature. It is a favorite, moreover, with a large class of 
young writers, and a still larger class of young readers, 
and is exerting a perceptible influence on the tastes and 
morals of the rising generation : that it should have 
hitherto been cultivated less as an art, than as a mere 
literary recreation for fame, or pecuniary emolument, or 
a convenient instrumentality in promoting the purposes 
of philanthropy and reform, is unfortunate in every 
point of view, for the last-named objects are not only 
wholly consistent with the former, but are more or less 
dependent upon it for their complete accomplishment. 
A want of due regard to " the unities," to the recognized 
rules of construction and development, to the just and 
harmonious arrangement of plot and incident, are promi- 
nent faults in our novels, — faults which are even more 
conspicuous in other departments of the belles-lettres, 
especially in our longer and more elaborate poems — 
while it is difficult to imagine any class of compositions 
more redolent with the peculiar aroma of the American 
mind than much of the lyric and descriptive poetry 
which has so skilfully and beautifully transfigured with 
the immortalizing touch of art the more common and 
familiar scenes, thoughts, traditions, and circumstances 
of our daily life. Such nationality as our literature may 
fairly claim, must, we think, be chiefly sought in the 
works of our novelists and poets. 



THE YOUXG MEN OF AMERICA. 65 

» 

We have attempted to set forth some of the reasons 
why, in the more ordinary acceptation of the phrase, 
a strictly national art or literature is, for us, simply an 
impossibility. There is, however, another, and, as we 
think, a higher and better use of these terms than any 
which is predicated upon mere political or geographical 
distinctions, a use which is based upon a recognition 
of the great fact of community of race and language, 
and an enlightened perception of the results accruing 
therefrom. It is in this view that the intellectual great- 
ness of the mother land, and especially her literary 
trophies, are seen to be so closely incorporated with ours, 
and ours with hers, as to form a single, homogeneous, 
indissoluble whole, a monument on which are inscribed 
names native to either hemisphere, colossal in its propor- 
tions, and perpetually towering upward with fresh accre- 
tions from among those who, in every quarter of the 
globe, speak one language, and trace a common lineage 
and history. Though the charters of our civil liberties 
date from a period within the memory of living men, w r e 
are yet heirs in direct descent of an intellectual franchise 
of an unknown antiquity ; voluntarily to renounce our 
share in so rich an inheritance, to imagine that anterior 
to, and beyond the limits of our political organization, 
we have neither right nor interest in such ancestral dig- 
nities as these, is wholly foreign to a spirit of wise and 



66 THE YOUNG MEN OF AMERICA. 

» 

liberal patriotism. We ought rather to rejoice that to us 
has been committed the increase and preservation of so 
priceless a deposit, that we, the youngest in the family 
of nations, possess a literature contemporary in origin 
with the earliest word of independent thought and 
speech fti a living tongue, and embodying from that day 
to the present the best and fullest results of the Anglo- 
Saxon mind in every period of its development. It is 
not easy to imagine the young American coolly and deli- 
berately turning his back upon these long-gathered trea- 
sures, to gloat over the few pence which his own country- 
men have added to the overflowing coffers, nor is there, 
we may be assured, any real ground for such an appre- 
hension ; duty and interest rightly understood, combine in 
recommending a very different course ; the voice of con- 
science and of an enlightened public sentiment do not cease 
to remind him that, in this respect at least, the character 
of the miser may be worthily assumed and enacted. 

The circle of the arts and sciences has been trodden 
with diligence and success by the feet of American youth. 
The cultivation of the fine arts, if at times chilled and 
discouraged by the nipping frosts of utilitarian zeal, has 
nevertheless commanded the devotion of a rare and 
varied genius which has left no despicable evidences of 
its quality. A more general attention and a more 
decided impulse has, however, been given to those arts 



THE YOUNG MEN OF AMERICA. 67 

which minister directly to the necessities ancj. conveni- 
ences of life, which under the name of practical arts, or 
applied sciences, are the objects of a characteristically 
earnest pursuit, a pursuit in which the energies of our 
young men are largely enlisted. It is truly wonderful 
to one who pauses to reflect on the matter, how entire 
and absolute has been the change effected in our domes- 
tic and social economy, in all the common surroundings 
of daily experience, by the mastery of the mind over^ 
the inert inanimate forces of nature, and how steadily 
and constantly invention follows invention, and improve- 
ment improvement. The conviction grows upon us that 
it is by special providential appointment that our vast 
national domain and untold resources should have been 
allotted to a people so admirably fitted to turn them to 
account. It is in connection with other occupations of 
this kind that some of the most prominent and well- 
developed traits of American character, especially in 
early life, are brought to our notice. 

Less eminence has been attained in the department of 
the so-called abstract sciences, although an excellent 
foundation is laid for their future culture. Utilitarian 
doctrines are more or less at war with the bestowal of 
time and talent upon anything from which no immediate 
and palpable advantages are to accrue. Not so, however, 
with regard to the natural sciences : these are wisely and 



« 



68 THE YOUNG MEN OF AMERICA. 

carefully studied, as well for the mere gratification of 
scientific tastes, as for their practical bearing on human 
interests. An almost illimitable field of investigation 
spreads its tempting marvels before the young inquirer ; 
around him is a mighty continent whereon to read the 
records of geology, to explore and chronicle the pheno- 
mena of vegetable life, to study the habits and structure 
of the whole animate and inanimate creation which it 
shows him. Within the boundaries of Tiis own land are 
gathered the divers products of many climes ; the frozen 
north and the regions of perpetual summer alike, are his, 
and his for all the great and beneficent purposes of 
science are their precious and manifold treasures. Nor 
has the substantial and timely encouragement of private 
patronage or governmental aid been wanting. Witness 
the noble endowments, and wise liberality of individuals, 
not only of the wealthy, but also of the intelligent and 
public-spirited possessors of a competency, or even less, 
a liberality which has both increased the active useful- 
ness of the learned and taken thought for the young and 
struggling learner ; witness the laudable and far-sighted 
policy of our rulers in the establishment of scientific in- 
stitutions, and the prosecution of expeditions of disco- 
very, explorations and investigations, honorable and be- 
neficial alike to the country, to science, and to the par- 
ties concerned in them. 

The young man — the new world ! what deep-fraught 



THE YOUNG MEN OF AMERICA. 69 

words are these, — what hidden depths of meaning are 
contained in the few short syllables which glide so easily 
from the tongue or from the pen ! The human race has 
for ages been passing through the slow, troublous, and 
diversified processes which history discloses — " the long 
results of time" have patiently gathered themselves toge- 
ther, and poured their rich accumulations into the lap of 
Western civilization, in order that youth might stand at 
last enfranchised with its inborn rights, delivered from 
superstitious restraints and conventionalisms, and re- 
stored to its true place and functions. The means and 
opportunities for such a consummation are ample ; every 
facility for mental and moral improvement, unnum- 
bered avenues of honorable and profitable employment, , 
a community not simply welcoming, but, as it were, com- 
manding his aid, — these are the incentives from without, 
while within there lives the consciousness of the lofty 
part which has been assigned for his performance, and a 
quickening sense of powers well-disciplined for the en- 
counters awaiting them. 

We are taught by observation, by analogy, and by 
reflection, to anticipate a distant, but surely approaching, 
period at which our own nation, having, like others, 
passed through the successive epochs of its rise and cul- 
mination, shall be gradually and irresistibly impelled 
toward the fatal brink of disaster and overthrow. Of 
each and every stage of this progress, young men will be 



70 THE YOUNG MEN OF AMERICA. 

something more than the mere spectators ; from us who 
march to-day at the side of a political parent in the first 
flush of manly vigor, to those who shall support and 
guide his decrepit steps, the long line stretches out into 
the unknown future, a pervading and vitalizing force, a 
power directly or indirectly felt in every portion of the 
body politic, — like the fresh, sustaining juices which robe 
the oak with perennial strength and verdure, imparting 
life and nourishment alike to the tender sapling, and to the 
defiant monarch of the forest. The fair tree of our coun- 
try, scion of a noble stock, well planted upon a congenial 
and nutritious soil, watered by the dews of constitutional 
order, and cheered by the benignant sunshine of pros- 
perous fortune, must draw up into every fibre and tissue 
the rich and wholesome sap which is the product of such 
influences as these. Young men of America ! let this 
current preserve evermore its steady, vivifying flow, 
neither vitiated by crude, immature, unassimilated mat- 
ter, nor volatilized by those fierce and fiery particles 
which stimulate rather than strengthen. If, in the path- 
way of this noble purpose, you are destined to fulfil the 
prophecy, " Even the youths shall faint and be weary, 
and the young men shall utterly fail," let it with equal 
truth, be added of you and of others, that " they that 
wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength ; they shall 
mount up with wings as eagles ; they shall run and not 
be weary ; and they shall walk, and not faint !" 



f 



•BINDER 



